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The Tasmanian tiger could start roaming the outback again.
According toBBC News, scientists from the U.S. and Australia are undertaking a multi-million dollar project to revive the Tasmanian tiger population. The species went extinct in the 1930s.
Officially named the thylacine, the species is commonly referred to as the Tasmanian tiger for the stripes on its back. However, the animal was not a big cat. Tasmanian tigers were classified as marsupials.
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BBC News reported that the project plans to extract stem cells from a living marsupial species with DNA similar to the Tasmanian tiger and use gene-editing technology to bring the extinct animal (or an extremely close approximation of it) back to life.
The Tasmanian tiger population first declined when humans arrived in Australia tens of thousands of years ago and again when a wild dog species known as the dingo appeared.
After this, the marsupial only roamed free on the island of Tasmania until they were hunted to extinction. The last captive Tasmanian tiger died at the Hobart Zoo in 1936.
According to BBC News, bringing back the extinct animal would require several scientific breakthroughs and mark the first “de-extinction” event in history if successful.
Experts outside the project are skeptical the project will work, calling “de-extinction” a matter of science fiction.
“De-extinction is a fairytale science,” Jeremy Austin from the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA told theSydneyMorningHerald, adding that the project is “more about media attention for the scientists and less about doing serious science.”
source: people.com
